Digital Commons Network^™

Divide And Recombined For Large Complex Data: Nonparametric-Regression Modelling Of Spatial And Seasonal-Temporal Time Series, Xiaosu Tong

Open Access Dissertations

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I briefly introduce one type of nonparametric regression method, namely local polynomial regression, followed by emphasis on one specific application of loess on time series decomposition, called Seasonal Trend Loess (STL). The chapter is closed by the introduction of D\&R; (Divide and Recombined) statistical framework. Data can be divided into subsets, each of which is applied with a statistical analysis method. This is an embarrassing parallel procedure since there is no communication between each subset. Then the analysis result for each subset are combined together to be the final analysis outcome for the …

Approximate Computing: An Integrated Cross-Layer Framework, Swagath Venkataramani

Open Access Dissertations

A new design approach, called approximate computing (AxC), leverages the flexibility provided by intrinsic application resilience to realize hardware or software implementations that are more efficient in energy or performance. Approximate computing techniques forsake exact (numerical or Boolean) equivalence in the execution of some of the application’s computations, while ensuring that the output quality is acceptable. While early efforts in approximate computing have demonstrated great potential, they consist of ad hoc techniques applied to a very narrow set of applications, leaving in question the applicability of approximate computing in a broader context.

The primary objective of this thesis is to …

An Examination Of Geographic Patterns Of Soil Climate And Its Classification In The U.S. System Of Soil Taxonomy, Hans Edwin Winzeler

Open Access Dissertations

Soil climate, the record of temporal patterns of soil moisture and temperature, is an important component of the structure of U.S. Soil Taxonomy. The U.S. Soil Survey has used the Newhall Simulation Model (NSM) for estimating soil climate from atmospheric climate records at weather stations since the 1970s. The current soil climate map of the U.S. was published in 1994 by using NSM runs from selected weather stations along with knowledge-based hand-drawn mapping procedures. We developed a revised soil climate mapping methodology using the NSM and digital soil mapping techniques.

The new methodology is called Grid Element Newhall Simulation Model …

Unraveling The Fingerprints Of Nox Using Stable Isotopes: Implications For Nox Source Partitioning And Oxidation Chemistry, Wendell William Walters

Open Access Dissertations

The nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) stable isotope composition (δ15N & δ18O) of nitrogen oxides (NOx )may be a useful tool for constraining NOx emission sources as well as for understanding the atmospheric oxidation pathways responsible for its removal if various NOx sources and sink processes exhibit characteristic isotopic compositions (“fingerprints”). However, this requires (1) an accurate and complete inventory of δ15N(NOx) values from major emission sources, (2) an assessment of the kinetic and equilibrium isotope effects that can impact δ15N and δ18O values of NOx, (3) and test these assumptions by conducting accurate in situ δ15N and δ18O measurements …

Fundamental Studies Of Flame Propagation In Lean-Burn Natural Gas Engines, Zhiyan Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Lean-burn natural gas engines offer enhanced thermal efficiencies and reduced soot and NOx emissions. However, cycle-to-cycle variability in combustion that can result from unreliable ignition, variability in equivalence ratio and quenching is a challenge. Reliability of ignition can be improved by employing a dual-fuel ignition strategy in which a small quantity of diesel fuel is injected to initiate ignition. Computational studies of n-heptane/methane-air mixing layers are performed to provide insight into the fundamental physics of dual-fuel ignition. The results show that the characteristic time required for steady premixed flame propagation has three components: time for autoignition to occur, time for …

Computer Vision-Based Structural Assessment Exploiting Large Volumes Of Images, Chul Min Yeum

Open Access Dissertations

Visual assessment is a process to understand the state of a structure based on evaluations originating from visual information. Recent advances in computer vision to explore new sensors, sensing platforms and high-performance computing have shed light on the potential for vision-based visual assessment in civil engineering structures. The use of low-cost, high-resolution visual sensors in conjunction with mobile and aerial platforms can overcome spatial and temporal limitations typically associated with other forms of sensing in civil structures. Also, GPU-accelerated and parallel computing offer unprecedented speed and performance, accelerating processing the collected visual data. However, despite the enormous endeavor in past …

Photoelectrochemical And Photophysical Studies Of Carbon Nanotube And Molybdenum Disulfide Based Light Harvesting Devices, Hanyu Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

There is a critical need in utilizing solar radiation as a renewable energy source. While photovoltaic solar cells are widely used, much attention has been devoted in the past decade to developing nanotechnology for potential cost reduction and improved device efficiency and reliability. Low-dimensional materials offer unique physical properties which may be exploited for solar energy harvesting and conversion. Understanding their fundamental properties and developing relevant manufacturing strategies will thus pave the road toward high-performance, cost-effective, light-harvesting devices.

This thesis has investigated single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanolayers for their light-harvesting ability in donor-acceptor systems. These materials …

Model Building And Security Analysis Of Puf-Based Authentication, Wenjie Che

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

In the context of hardware systems, authentication refers to the process of confirming the identity and authenticity of chip, board and system components such as RFID tags, smart cards and remote sensors. The ability of physical unclonable functions (PUF) to provide bitstrings unique to each component can be leveraged as an authentication mechanism to detect tamper, impersonation and substitution of such components. However, authentication requires a strong PUF, i.e., one capable of producing a large, unique set of bits per device, and, unlike secret key generation for encryption, has additional challenges that relate to machine learning attacks, protocol attacks and …

Art Infested Water, December 2016, Nova Southeastern University Department Of Performing And Visual Arts

Department of Performing and Visual Arts Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Professional Product Review Vol. 11 No. 3, American Dental Association, Council On Scientific Affairs

Professional Product Review

A user-friendly newsletter from the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs offering scientifically sound, unbiased, and clinically relevant information to member dentists about professional dental products tested by the ADA. This collection is historical and may not reflect current standards. For up-to-date information contact the ADA.

Metabolic Syndrome Screening In Seriously Mentally Ill Patients: A Quality Improvement Project, Annabel Moreno

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Seriously mentally ill patients who are taking second-generation antipsychotics have a high risk of metabolic complications, including obesity, diabetes mellitus type II, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia. Guidelines to screen for metabolic syndrome were established by the American Diabetes Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and North American Association for the Study of Obesity (Clark, 2004). Compliance with implementing the guidelines to screen and monitor for metabolic syndrome vary from regular monitoring to little or none. This quality improvement project provided an educational intervention on screening and monitoring for metabolic syndrome in patients who were seriously mentally ill. The …

The Learned Hand Unformula For Short-Swing Liability, Andrew Chin

Washington Law Review

Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 allows for the recovery of short-swing profits realized by certain insiders from trading in a corporation’s stock within a period of less than six months. Three generations of corporate law students have been taught the “lowest-in, highest-out” formula that is intended to maximize the disgorgement of short-swing profits under section 16(b). Arnold Jacobs’s 1987 treatise presented two hypothetical examples where the formula fell short of the intended maximum, but courts, commentators, and practitioners have largely ignored these theoretical challenges to the formula’s validity. This Article identifies Gratz v. Claughton as the …

Tunnel Vision: Causes, Effects, And Mitigation Strategies, Brian Reichart

Hofstra Law Review

The author discusses his experience concerning a case of actual innocence involving murder defendant Patricia "Patty" Prewitt with little chance of judicial remedy because of what is referred to as tunnel vision via confirmation bias on the part of legal authorities concerning the criminal investigation and subsequent trial of Prewitt, particularly a single-minded theory of culpability based on the gathered evidence. The article also discusses possible strategies of tunnel vision mitigation.

A Comparison Of Online And Face-To-Face Achievement In Physical Science, Lisa F. Mozer

Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This study provided a descriptive analysis of learning outcomes in both online and face-to-face grades 9-12 physical science courses. Archived data from a single school system were used for a comparative analysis of learning outcomes in high school physical science between students enrolled in online classes and students enrolled in face-to-face classes. The study compared two years of summative assessment scores of two student groups and, overall, found equality between the two learning environments. Online learning outcomes and face-to-face learning outcomes were similar for both school years, 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The overall comparison between learning environments was further examined …

Faculty Senate Chronicle For November 3, 2016, Jon Miller

The University of Akron Faculty Senate Chronicle

Minutes of the regular meeting of The University of Akron Faculty Senate on November 3, 2016.

A Century Of Grading Research: Meaning And Value In The Most Common Educational Measure, Susan M. Brookhart, Thomas R. Guskey, Alex J. Bowers, James H. Mcmillan, Jeffrey K. Smith, Lisa F. Smith, Michael T. Stevens, Megan E. Welsh

Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Faculty Publications

Grading refers to the symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on report cards. This review of over 100 years of research on grading considers five types of studies: (a) early studies of the reliability of grades, (b) quantitative studies of the composition of K–12 report card grades, (c) survey and interview studies of teachers’ perceptions of grades, (d) studies of standards-based grading, and (e) grading in higher education. Early 20th-century studies generally condemned teachers’ grades as unreliable. More recent studies of the relationships of grades to tested achievement and survey studies …

Drone Zoning, Troy A. Rule

North Carolina Law Review

The growing popularity of small civilian drones has generated a wide array of complex and unprecedented regulatory challenges. Many of these challenges, such as keeping drones away from manned aircraft, are matters that the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) is clearly authorized and well equipped to address. However, several other drone policy challenges relate solely to drones’ potential to disrupt landowners’ privacy and to otherwise interfere with activities on the ground. The nature and severity of these conflicts often varies greatly depending on a drone’s specific location; drone uses that are welcomed in some city neighborhoods may be prohibitively disruptive in …

The Weekly Challenger, December 1, 2016, The Weekly Challenger, Et Al

Weekly Challenger Newspaper Collection

The December 1, 2016, issue of The Weekly Challenger.

The Impact Of Leverage On Hedge Fund Performance, Wansoo Choi

Financial Analyst

In this paper, the effect of leverage on hedge fund performance is measured. TASS data from 1994 to 2016 are used to measure the impact of leverage on hedge fund performance. Three hedge fund performance measurements are regressed on degree of leverage with eight control variables including fund size, strategies, and use of derivatives. The results show that for strategyadjusted return as a performance measurement, hedge fund leverage has a negative impact on fund performance. Also there is evidence of diseconomies of scale where funds with medium-sized assets under management (AUM) tend to show better performance than funds with high …

Pass-Through And The Prediction Of Merger Price Effects, N. H. Miller, Marc Remer, C. Ryan, G. Sheu

Economics Faculty Works

We use Monte Carlo experiments to study how pass-through can improve merger price predictions, focusing on the first order approximation (FOA) proposed in Jaffe and Weyl [2013]. FOA addresses the functional form misspecification that can exist in standard merger simulations. We find that the predictions of FOA are tightly distributed around the true price effects if pass-through is precise, but that measurement error in pass-through diminishes accuracy. As a comparison to FOA, we also study a methodology that uses pass-through to select among functional forms for use in simulation. This alternative also increases accuracy relative to standard merger simulation and …

Information Outlook, November/December 2016, Special Libraries Association

Information Outlook, 2016

Volume 20, Issue 6

An Experimental Examination Of Visual Grouping Techniques In Skip Patterns On Respondent Navigation Errors, Rebecca J. Powell

Survey Research and Methodology Program: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Researchers are able to obtain better coverage and response rates with mail surveys compared to landline telephone surveys due to (1) easier access to the United States Postal Service (USPS) Computerized Delivery Sequence File (CDSF) (Iannacchione, 2011), and (2) the rise of households with no landline telephone (Blumberg and Luke, 2016). However, the use of the mail mode raises important challenges, such as the need to help respondents navigate the questionnaire without interviewer assistance.

As not all questions asked are relevant to all respondents, skip patterns are introduced to navigate respondents around questions that do not apply to them. With …

Timber Talk, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2016

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

In This Issue

Lumber Market Reports 1

Hardwood Lumber Prices 2

Note from the Editor - EAB Meeting Discussion 3

THE CHALLENGE - Using Forest Residues from Forest Operations 4

2016 Tax Tips Bulletin Available 4

Nebraska Forest Industry Spotlight 5

Alaska Airlines’ first flight with biofuel made from forest residuals 7

The Four “P’s” of Marketing Your Small Sawmill Business 7

Trading Post 8

Continuous Long-Term Health Monitoring Using Ultrasonic Wave Propagation, Ece Erdogmus

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Volumetry Of Low-Contrast Liver Lesions With Ct: Investigation Of Estimation Uncertainties In A Phantom Study, Qin Li, Yongguang Liang, Qiao Huang, Min Zong, Benjamin Berman, Marios A. Gavrielides, Lawrence H. Schwartz, Binsheng Zhao, Nicholas Petrick

United States Food and Drug Administration: Publications

Purpose: To evaluate the performance of lesion volumetry in hepatic CT as a function of various imaging acquisition parameters.

Methods: An anthropomorphic abdominal phantom with removable liver inserts was designed for this study. Two liver inserts, each containing 19 synthetic lesions with varying diameter (6–40 mm), shape, contrast (10–65 HU), and both homogenous and mixed-density were designed to have background and lesion CT values corresponding to arterial and portal-venous phase imaging, respectively. The two phantoms were scanned using two commercial CT scanners (GE 750 HD and Siemens Biograph mCT) across a set of imaging protocols (four slice thicknesses, …

Optimal Portfolio Management In Alaska: A Case Study On Risk Characteristics Of Environmental Consulting Companies, Katura Willingham

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Sharp declines in global oil prices have led to a marked contraction in Alaska’s natural resource dependent economy. This, coupled with record the State’s budgetary shortfalls and a decrease in incoming federal dollars, has created a climate where environmental consulting companies must accept riskier projects to balance portfolio growth and security. As a result, companies must adopt a risk-based portfolio management approach as both a high level strategy and a core management practice. It is important to specifically identify projects best suited for an organization’s tolerance for risk based off of the supply and demand of the industry in rapidly …

Project Management Methodology Applied To A Research And Recommendations Study: Understanding Workplace Accidents Involving Equipment "Blind Spots", Blake Delaney

Student Projects for Graduate Degrees

Nearly 25 percent of work vehicle-related deaths take place while the vehicle is moving in reverse. The total cost to employers in 2000 was $60 billion, with two-thirds of the accidents taking place on-the-job. Due to the high number of vehicle blind spot accidents that take place each year, it is critical to ensure current technology is being utilized to prevent future accidents. (“Guidelines for employers to reduce motor vehicle crashes,” 2006) While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigates industrial fatalities, too little information is gathered into general categories to effectively understand the overall effectiveness of U.S. regulations, …

Discipling Muslim Insiders: A Working Framework, Oscar Osindo

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

No abstract provided.

Maritime Advanced Geospatial Intelligence Craft For Oil Spill Response: Selected Resources And Annotations, C. Reid Nichols, Nikolaos I. Xiros, Jeanne Pavy

Project Documentation

This selection of resources highlights the utility of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) for use in marine spill response. Each entry is followed by a brief summary and evaluation of the source (i.e., the annotation). Most annotations will define the scope of the source, list significant cross references, and identify relevant USV capabilities. There is no attempt to provide actual hypotheses, data, or graphics, especially concerning cited articles published in refereed journals. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited. Relevance relates to the citation’s presentation of capabilities that …

Book Review: A History Of Rwandan Identity And Trauma: The Mythmakers' Victims, James J. Snow

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.